


Burrow Your Way To My Heart

by JasperIsAFanboy



Series: The Afternoon Light Cuts to Size [12]
Category: Blood Drive (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, i mean it abt the body horror my dudes, rated for horror themes not nsfw themes, well more hurt than comfort i suppose but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 09:34:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13633581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: Julian hasn’t given much thought to the origins of Rasher’s maw; Rasher’d said it was because Heart dunked him in the Scar, but beyond that, Julian has remained surprisingly incurious.





	Burrow Your Way To My Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [d__T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Afternoon Sun (Coming)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13599945) by [d__T](https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T). 



> so hey cats me and my good friend d__T have been talking abt rasher as a scar-influenced eldritch abomination, and bc i love misery i went and wrote this. u should totally go read d__T's series "The Afternoon Light Cuts To Size" before u read this, everything will make way more sense. esp the work this was inspired by. like u should prob def read that first. also i'm not kidding abt the body horror, cats, i rated it explicit bc of it for a damn good reason. if u've seen john carpenter's 'the thing' or the 2011 prequel, that's the kind of shit i'm talking abt.
> 
> title borrowed from the darkest of the hillside thickets (who're fucking rad and u should totally listen to them if u like lovecraft and/or horrorpunk). my most sincere apologies to colin cunningham and carel nel. esp carel nel.

Julian hasn’t given much thought to the origins of Rasher’s maw; Rasher’d said it was because Heart dunked him in the Scar, but beyond that, Julian has remained surprisingly incurious. Certainly he’s fascinated with the maw itself; throwing candy at it, trying to see how far he can stick his hand in it before it bites (current record: to the knuckles), watching Rasher feed it like it’s one of the carnivorous engines. But as to its actual origins, Julian has been unconcerned. Is it a mutation? Is it some kind of eldritch entity that’s attached itself to Rasher and carved itself a home in his belly? Is it something else entirely, something made by Heart and basically glued to Rasher? Julian has no idea. Nor is Julian much interested in what it does to Rasher; he’s never seen it have any effect on Rasher, really, aside from occasionally make him as vicious and bloodthirsty as a rabid animal. Julian doesn’t know much about the maw and frankly doesn’t care to know.

But even as self-centered as he is, he can’t help noticing that Rasher grows increasingly uncomfortable and antsy the nearer they get to the Scar. He’s fidgety and almost pale under his tattoos, like he’s anxious about something. Sometimes he even seems close to vomiting, and Julian has never seen Rasher vomit. He’s not even sure if he can, he doesn’t know what happened to his organs when the maw hollowed his belly and roosted there. Rasher won’t say anything, just insists either that he’s fine or that he’ll be better soon he’s sure. Julian can’t help but disbelieve him, but if Rasher doesn’t want to talk, he won’t, and nothing Julian can say or do could change his mind. Rasher is obedient only when he wants to be, like a spoiled cat. Julian decides he’s sick but doesn’t want to let on, and leaves him be. He does notice that Rasher has an uncanny, unerring ability to stare towards the Scar the way a compass needle points to north. It’s like something’s calling him.

They’re a little less than a day’s drive from the Scar’s gaping expanse when it happens. They’ve stopped to allow the racers to catch up to the convoy, though they won’t be there for a while yet; Julian had set them on a longer course than usual, just for shits and giggles. He figures there’s at least two days before the first of them start barreling in. As much as he lives for the spotlight, for the adoration of the crowd, for those all-too-brief moments where he is their god on high, he still can’t help but occasionally savor a moment or so to himself. And maybe savor Rasher, if whatever’s bothering him isn’t bothering him so badly he can’t come to Julian’s bed. They haven’t started setting up yet, have only just parked the sundry vehicles.

He hears a knock on the door of his trailer, quick and sharp and somehow tentative, and no one enters, whoever it is obviously waiting for a reply. Not Rasher, then. Rasher doesn’t bother waiting for permission, he just saunters on in. His knock is perfunctory, only a warning that he’s there and coming on in. Julian could be jerking off, plotting the next bit of racecourse, or contemplating the meaning of life, and Rasher would still come in without permission, secure in the knowledge that he’s too useful to Julian for proper punishment. Whoever’s on the other side of Julian’s door is a lot less sure of themselves and their relative level of dispensability.

“Enter,” Julian calls. The door creaks open to reveal one of the all-but-faceless roadies. They tend to drop like flies, so Julian doesn’t bother learning anything about them. He can barely distinguish between them.

“Uh, boss, it’s.” The roadie stops and swallows hard. Julian actually looks at them now. The roadie is actually shaking in their boots, paler than normal behind their curly hair and eyes wide enough the whites are visible all around their irises. They’re a bundle of nerves, but, Julian realizes, it’s not because they’re in Julian’s trailer. Julian feels his own nerves ratchet up a notch.

“Spit it out,” he says.

“It’s Rasher, boss,” the roadie manages. “Something’s. Something’s really wrong. He’s not opening the door and… it sounds like he’s getting the shit beat out of him.” They seem like they have more to say, but they don’t speak further.

Julian springs to his feet, snagging his coat. Any sentiments aside, Rasher is useful. He’s loyal, he’s durable as hell, he knows where Julian’s battery is, and he’s good in bed. He’s perhaps the only other irreplaceable part of the entire enterprise. Another Rasher would be very hard to come by. If he’s in some kind of trouble, Julian’s going to have to try to get him out of it. He brushes past the startled roadie and strides through the convoy towards Rasher’s trailer. That Rasher still has his own trailer when he spends most of his time in Julian’s is only down to the fact that even Rasher can’t tolerate Julian constantly and does in fact need to get away from him sometimes.

But after all the shit that happens during the race, what was going on that was so disturbing one of the roadies could barely speak of it?

As he nears, something thuds hard enough against the trailer’s wall to make it rock on its wheels, and Julian can just hear an agonized yell. The roadie wasn’t wrong, only understated the issue: it sounds like Rasher’s being dismembered, not beaten. There’s a crowd gathered around the door, but no one will approach it. Rasher’s scary enough on his own, between the maw and his closeness with Julian, and with the noises and rocking of the trailer it’s small wonder no one will get near. The crowd parts immediately when someone sees Julian approaching. He heads up to the door and bangs his fist on it.

“Rasher!” he yells. He gets only another thud against the wall in reply, and startles back. That sounded like a body hitting the wall. “Rasher! What the fuck is going on in there?”

A groan like the sound of tortured souls in Hell comes, only just audibly, through the door. Julian feels a cold chill creep down his back when he realizes that in that groan had been elements of Rasher’s voice, and that it had sounded like Julian’s name. It had barely sounded human. Julian puts his hand on the latch but hesitates to turn it. He turns instead to the crowd.

“Fuck off!” he snaps. The crowd wisely fucks off. He waits for the last one to vanish, then opens the door and ducks inside.

The trailer’s interior stinks, a rank animal smell like a livestock car, underlaid with blood and fear. It’s dim, too, the curtains are all drawn, but there’s enough light for Julian to see the huddled, twisted form lying on the floor by the bed. There’re too many limbs, he thinks. Rasher sometimes seems to have enough limbs and elbows and knees for two men, he’s so tall, but the sheer number of limbs isn’t right. There’re at least three arms that he can easily discern at any given moment. He can hear ragged, wet gasping coming from the shape. Something bursts out of it and strikes the wall hard, making Julian jump, before it falls to the floor with a wet thump. Julian’s limbs feel watery and weak. Is this fear? Is he actually afraid? Can’t be, fear is for lesser mortals. He flicks on the light and can’t help crying out in terror. He backs involuntarily into the doorframe and almost topples right out the door.

Surely that distorted thing, that horror movie monster isn’t Rasher. Surely that grotesque, malformed thing isn’t a human being, one whose body Julian knows almost as well as he knows his own. How is it alive? It can barely hold a form. Limbs twitch and bend in the wrong directions in the wrong places or branch out from elbows and knees, as mutated as a frog in a poisoned pond. New limbs stretch out, wither, and drop off before melting into a stinking ooze within seconds. Julian stares, looking for something, anything, to give him some frame of reference. What he thinks might be Rasher’s flank swells until a new arm bursts free in a spray of blood. It reaches for him, too many fingers on a hand that splits in the middle, before falling apart. It’s awful. It’s deeply, viscerally unsettling, to see one of Rasher’s skinny arms stretch like taffy before snapping and rotting into organic goo. God, he can see pulsing organs and throbbing veins.

“Rasher?” he croaks. He’s never heard his own voice so wrecked before. “Is… is that… is that you?”

The thing groans. “Juuu… lii… annn…” At one end of the confusing mass, something that might have been a head lifts from the floor. Julian can’t quite tell what it is, since he can’t see any facial features and any tattoos are hidden under blood and other nameless fluids. But he can see an eye, wide and terrified and in obvious pain. “Juu…” The thing lets out another wordless, agonized groan as a ribcage pushes near the surface of its skin and bursts out in a spray of blood, the ribs separating from the sternum with tremendous cracks. Impossibly, a heart and lungs actually shoot out between the broken bones, shredded as they pass through the jagged ends, to hit the wall with a cartoonish splat. Julian has to fight back a mad, hysterical urge to laugh. The thing groans Julian’s name again, and this time there’s no doubt.

It’s him. It’s really Rasher. This reject from an eighties monster movie, this tortured and tormented thing on the floor is _Rasher_. Julian slowly approaches, and the change in angle makes it easier to bear, somehow. He can see what parts are where, he can see where Rasher actually starts and stops, where he’s separate from the additional limbs, the core body beneath the growths. He looks like he was lying on his side before all this started. Had he been lying in bed and fallen out? The ichor from Rasher’s decaying limbs stains Julian’s boots, but he crouches down next to Rasher’s head anyway and touches his cheek. The eye he’d seen closes, though another opens on Rasher’s neck, and Rasher lets out an honest-to-god whimper.

“Hurts,” Rasher groans.

Julian bets it does. While he watches, actual tentacles come out of the mouth on his belly (barely recognizable as the original) and lash the air before the mouth clamps shut and cuts them off. Julian’s reminded of the time he slammed the door on a roadie’s hand and cut his fingers off. Rasher lets out another yell. The tentacles fall to the floor and twitch like lizard tails before melting.

“Can you hear me?” Julian asks. Rasher nods. “Has this happened before?” Rasher nods again. “When?”

“Scar. Heart.” This time his voice comes out of a mouth that opened on a deformed leg coming out of his hip at the wrong angle.

“When Heart put you in the Scar?”

Rasher nods. Julian feels something clutch at his sleeve, thinks it’s a hand but determinedly does not look. He keeps his eyes focused on the recognizable bits of Rasher’s face.

“Will it stop on its own?” A nod. “Do we have to leave the Scar?” Rasher shakes his head. “How long? A day? Two days? Three?”

“Don’t. Don’t—urrgh…” Rasher’s throat swells like a frog’s before splitting to extrude a short, thick tentacle that falls, unattached, to the floor like a slug. It shrivels and melts before Julian’s eyes. He watches Rasher’s throat detumesce and close, actually healing until it looks as good as new. His tattoos weren’t even disturbed. That’s something of a relief; it implies the rest of him will go back to normal.

“Don’t know, do you?” Julian asks. Rasher nods. “Okay.” He stands up. “I’ll be right back.”

Julian goes to the door and leaves, closing the door behind him. He looks around, sees no one. He sprints to the shadow of the trailer and vomits spectacularly on the ground. He was going to be seeing that in his nightmares, he was sure. Poor Rasher. The pain in his eye had been indescribable. Julian doesn’t have much in the way of empathy or sympathy but even he feels bad for Rasher. Anyone would. What the fuck had Heart done to him, sticking him in the Scar? What had they been hoping to accomplish? Had they even had a goal in mind? Julian can’t help but be angry on Rasher’s behalf. He remembers how bad Rasher had looked when he came back with the maw in his belly and actually shudders. If what he’s going through now had happened then…

Once he’s certain he isn’t going to bring anything else up, Julian pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes his mouth. He drops the handkerchief to the dirt. He turns and heads off in search of a roadie. When he finds one, he grabs him by the shoulder and spins him around. He isn’t the same one as before, evidently terrified to be face-to-face with Julian if the way his blue eyes bug is any indication.

“Get everyone moving again, go a day further north,” he says to the roadie. “Send the new coordinates to the racers. Leave my and Rasher’s trailers. We’ll catch up.”

“U-uh, why?” the roadie dares to ask. “What’s, what’s wrong with R-rasher, I heard the banging earlier, I—“

Julian gives him a shake. “Don’t fucking argue with me! Rasher’s. Sick. He’s sick. Too sick to deal with the race right now, so. I’m giving him an extra day to recover. He’s been a good dog, and good dogs get rewards. Now fuck off. Radio me when the racers arrive.” He shoves the roadie so hard he goes sprawling in the dirt. The roadie scrambles to his feet and scurries off to do Julian’s bidding.

Julian takes a steadying breath and heads back towards Rasher’s trailer.

Rasher continues to mutate and change shape for the rest of the day, growing and shedding body parts like a lizard on growth hormones. He sounds absolutely pitiful, evidently in constant pain if the way he groans and whines is any indication. Around midnight, the transformations start to slow. New limbs appear less and less frequently, and the ones that hadn’t fallen apart immediately begin to slough off. Julian opens the door and every window, once he’s sure the convoy has left, but even so he still has to go outside for fresh air every so often. It’s a welcome change from the close, reeking air of the trailer. He wonders if it’ll have to be gutted to get the smell out. Outside the trailer, everything is blessedly quiet. Rasher’s cries are horrible, and being away from them is a relief. Finally the last extra limb falls off and decays. The floor is permanently stained at this point. The various organs Rasher had sprouted go the way of the limbs, though their extrusion is even more disgusting since they push to and out of his skin, flopping to the ground like excised tumors before melting like the limbs. Julian doesn’t try to identify them.

By dusk of the second day since the convoy left, Rasher has lost all the extra body parts, organs and limbs alike. It strikes Julian that the whole ordeal had been mercifully quick. He couldn’t imagine what would’ve happened if it had gone on longer. Probably the pain would have killed Rasher, if he’d had to endure it longer. He'd passed out multiple times from the pain as it was. Julian hadn’t been able to do anything for him, but Rasher’d seemed to take some comfort from his presence. Once Julian is sure Rasher has finished shedding parts, he rises from the chair he’d occupied the entire two days and goes to him.

Rasher is curled fetal and naked on his side. He’s a mess, covered in blood and lymph and god knows what else. He’s still panting, every breath sounding like it’s being dragged out of him with hooks and chains. The maw is still there, but even it looks slack. Surprisingly, his skin isn’t scarred, though Julian saw it split countless times and it’s pink and raw and chapped-looking where it isn’t painted sickly blue and purple with bruises. He’s starting to shiver. Julian grabs a blanket off the bed, hopes it isn’t a favourite since it’ll be ruined, and wraps it around Rasher. He spots his corset, draped over a second chair, and rolls it up to tuck in his waistband. He goes to pick Rasher up. He’s so painfully light, even for him, holding him is like holding a bundle of sticks bound in wire and twine. He must have burned through a great deal of energy with all that, he’s even skinnier than he was before, lost weight he really couldn’t afford to lose. Rasher realizes he’s being carried and clutches weakly at Julian’s shirt. Julian leaves the trailer, flips the blanket over Rasher’s face when he sees him wince at the sunlight, and carries him to his own trailer. His has a better shower.

He sets Rasher down on the floor of his shower and gently pulls the blanket away. Julian strips to the waist and turns the shower on. (He’ll have to burn his clothes, they’re covered in the mess of fluids that’d covered Rasher. He’d never really liked that particular waistcoat anyway.) As soon as the water hits his skin, Rasher tilts his face to it, closing his eyes and seeming to revel in the warmth. Probably the heat is soothing. Julian lets the water run over him, rinsing away some of the ichor, before taking a washcloth and wiping him down. Rasher doesn’t make a move to help or hinder, just lets Julian manipulate him like a doll. There’s goo that looks unpleasantly like mucus caught in his hair, so Julian washes that for him too. Once he has him clean, Julian turns off the shower and wraps Rasher in towels before picking him up again. Rasher’s head lolls against his shoulder. Julian puts him to bed, shucks off his trousers (also stained beyond repair) and gets in with him as an afterthought. He wonders if he should’ve got the corset on him, but dismisses it. It’s not the first time he’s laid beside Rasher without it. The maw hadn’t eaten him then, and it wouldn’t eat him now. Hopefully.

“Boss,” Rasher croaks. His voice is drought-mud cracked. Julian leaves and comes back with a glass of water. Rasher takes a sip and pushes it away. He falls asleep seconds later.

He sleeps through the night and into the afternoon of the next day. When he wakes, Julian is at the desk. The water glass is still beside the bed. Julian glances up and sees him.

“Welcome back,” Julian says. “Care to explain why the fuck you looked like the monster from _The Thing_?”

“The Scar,” Rasher said, picking up the water glass in a very shaky hand. “It triggered something in the maw.” Julian watches him take slow sips. At least he knows not to chug it down and make himself sick. “Happened before, when Heart put me in the Scar. It lasted longer then, almost a week. Had me on an IV for two days before I could move again. When it stopped it settled on the maw. Didn’t know this would happen. Sorry.”

“Will it happen again?” Julian regrets asking almost immediately, because Rasher’s eyes go haunted. But he doesn’t retract the question; he needs to know if his right-hand man is suddenly going to lose his ability to stay human again.

“I don’t know,” Rasher said after more sips of water. “I don’t know what triggered it this time.”

“Proximity?”

“Maybe. It was like… the Scar was pulling at the maw, like it… wanted part of itself back? Or that…” He coughs hard into his elbow, hacking bronchial coughs that make Julian wonder if his lungs grew back wrong. He’s pretty sure he saw lungs amongst the organs that pushed out of his body as it reverted back to what passed for normal. Rasher wheezes for a bit once the coughs ease. “Fuck, boss, I don’t fucking know.”

For several long moments there are no sounds beyond Rasher’s dry throat clicking as he swallows more water. He’s still wheezing a little, too.

“Racers arrive yet?” Rasher asks eventually.

“Not yet.”

“Good.” Rasher sets the empty glass down and flops back into bed. “I feel like shit. Wake me when they arrive.”

Julian snorts. Rasher falls asleep again. After a moment, Julian joins him. Silence descends.


End file.
